


Shiner

by semele



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 21:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4640811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/pseuds/semele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Killing, Bellamy thinks, is like riding a bike.</p><p>For agentlemuse's prompt: <i>Two insomniacs with too much on their minds.</i>. Set immediately after s2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shiner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hideeho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hideeho/gifts).



> Thank you so much for such amazing prompt! I had real trouble deciding what to write, because I kinda wanted to fill all five, but only had time to write one. I hope you enjoy <333.
> 
> Big thanks to shortitude for pretending to not be my beta.

Killing, Bellamy thinks, is like riding a bike.

No, it isn't. This is an utterly idiotic comparison and he knows it, especially since he isn't even sure if he understands this idiom correctly. But it sounds so nice in his head, smooth and rounded, _likeridingabike_ , and pretty words help him take his mind off his guilt, so here it is. Like riding a bike.

He can't get used to sleeping in Camp Jaha, as if all those metal shelters reminded him of home way too much, except on the ground, he can't exactly turn on the lights, and read a book until sleep overcomes him. So he finds other things to occupy his time, knives to sharpen or clothes to mend. The Camp, like the Ark, is never out of simple jobs for him to do.

The best light, he finds, is outside the infirmary.

(They have to remove him from the sick room the first night after Mount Weather, and for a single moment, he lights up like a flare; gets into a shouting match with Jackson, _damn you, let me see them_ , empty bones and cracked skin, Jasper's glassy eyes and Raven's pale, pale fingers squeezing the frame of her bed. When the doctors finally make him leave, he sits by the door, pulls out his knife, and starts sharpening it with shaking hands until it's dawn, and he's so filled with his people's screams and cries he doesn't even feel guilty anymore, just furious and helpless, which is almost worse.)

At dawn he gets up, his face set, and reports for guard duty.

***

"You'll ruin your eyes," he hears a voice tell him a few nights later, when he's squinting over a torn jacket in dim lights outside the infirmary.

"Raven?"

There is no brace on her leg, and the makeshift crutch she's leaning on looks stolen, but he knows better than to point that out. Even if she escaped her doctors, it's not like he's going to escort her back to bed.

"Alive and kicking," she tells him lightly. "You've got more of those?"

"Jackets? Yes. Needles? No."

He probably should be softer with her, should ask about her leg and about the pain, then get his ass rightfully kicked, but before he can decide what to say, Raven sits next to him heavily, and starts turning her crutch in her hands.

"Do you at least have a knife?" she asks sharply.

That, he does have, almost sharp enough to cut metal, and he hands it to her instead of that apology he owes her, _I'm sorry I didn't kill them sooner_. He knows he had his share in her pain, and he knows exactly how big a share, so the least he can do is spare her his words.

She takes the knife from him, and starts unscrewing something in her crutch, working on some hitch at the handle that apparently annoys her, then swears like a sailor when it doesn't work her way.

"Why are you even here?" she asks, putting the knife away impatiently. "I'd never set a foot here if it depended on me."

Bellamy shrugs at that, turns his gaze to her automatically, as if it's easy to look anyone in the eye.

There is a nasty bruise from a leather strap around her neck, but her face is deceptively clean of blood, what a joke; Raven is shattered from inside out, bits and pieces sharp as his knife, and those doctors, he heard, are acting as if they can make her whole.

Good luck trying to keep her contained.

"Couldn't sleep," he admits.

(The next night he can't sleep, he breaks into one of the workshops; steals a broken radio and a handful of screwdrivers.)

***

He gets harsh, and rough, and nasty, a guard all over again, until O yells at him, frustrated, _snap out of it, snap out of it, damn it, or I swear..._. But it’s easier to be like this, easier than to keep track of all those things he has to pay for, killing those people, or not killing them soon enough, or leaving Monty to deal with his mess all alone. 

He gets in trouble for that radio, even though Raven is clever, and no one ever finds it on her. Someone must’ve seen him, or maybe his C.O. for once makes an educated guess. They don’t whip him in the end, his crime quiet, unnoticed by anyone but one engineer, but his smart mouth earns him a slap that makes his ears ring, welcome back to the Ark, cadet Blake.

When Miller’s dad sees him, he looks like he’s about to boil over, but Bellamy shrugs it off and goes outside again with his gun to clean.

He’s by the fence this time, far away from the infirmary, so when he hears steps approaching him, he doesn’t even turn his face.

“Nice shiner,” is all Raven says before she sits heavily next to him. “I got your radio fixed.”

“Not my radio.”

She doesn’t pussyfoot around him; grabs his chin sharply, then turns his head towards the light to take a close look.

“I can see that,” she says after a moment, holds Bellamy’s gaze. “Was he scared? They’re scared of you, you know. They’re scared of us all.”

There is a single lamp lit above them, but it’s enough to see Raven’s face, still clean and still swollen, the bruise on her neck an ugly shade of yellow. She has matching sets on her wrists and ankles, hidden under loose clothes that don’t fool Bellamy for a second, but her eyes are focused. Grounding.

She pulls Miller’s shirt that he was supposed to fix out of Bellamy’s bag, and when she hands it back after two silent hours, the stitches are crooked like a child’s, but so strong there is no point redoing them.

***

Bellamy talks to Monty first thing the next morning, and it feels like pieces slowly falling back together and falling into focus: shadows under Monty’s eyes, and O’s quick temper, and Miller’s unsteady hands.

So this night, instead of feeling sorry for himself, he builds a fire in front of O’s shelter, and it’s like a beacon. Harper shows up first, but others are quick to follow, Miller, and Octavia, and even Lincoln, and soon he has twenty people sitting around him, talking, and laughing, and swapping stories, long shifts and scavenging hunts in Mount Weather. Raven shows up last, seething with anger as if she’s just been in a fight, but she looks at the gathering with grim approval, _you did good, shooter, now let them get really scared_.

Well, it works like clockwork, because a few days later, his C.O. does find a feeble excuse to get Bellamy whipped.

Afterwards, he stays on his shift until the very last minute, then goes straight to Raven’s and stays the night, his fingers absolutely steady as he unscrews lids and untangles wires. If he breaks something beyond repair, she never tells him.

***

As far as Bellamy knows, no one really agrees on leaving.

They walk out in broad daylight, forty people marching one by one, too many, way too many to stop. O is at the head of the column, full Grounder make-up obscuring whatever softness is left in her face, Raven by her side silent like a storm. Bellamy’s backpack, heavy from scavenged pieces of fabric, rests painfully on his bruised back, but he walks surely between Harper and Monty.

He never finds out what kind of trouble Sinclair gets in for opening the gate for them, but he does hear Octavia’s ringing voice when Kane and Chancellor Griffin show up, eyes wild, demanding to know what the hell is going on.

“We’re heading beyond that hill. To see if it’s _habitable_.”

***

He pitches his tent between Miller and Octavia, makes a bed for himself as well as he can, but the new camp is loud for sleeping, buzzing and restless in its safety.

Or maybe he can’t sleep because of his back, raw and burning after the day’s march. He really should’ve been a reasonable person and carried the pack in his hand.

Oh, what a load of crap.

They have a common fire burning in the middle of the camp, and Bellamy picks a well-lit spot on a fallen log before he starts sharpening his knife; they have hunting to do in the morning, then foraging and preserving, an endless list of chores to occupy him in lieu of brooding on what he’s done. There are people around him. They come first.

When Raven shows up in the middle of the night, and takes a seat right next to him, he doesn’t hesitate; picks up the gun he’s had prepared, and hands it to her to clean and load.

It feels like riding a bike.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Shiner](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5743840) by [growlery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery)




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